1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate processing apparatus, a substrate processing method and a storage medium, in which a substrate is taken out from a carrier and processed.
2. Background Art
A photoresist process, which is one of semiconductor manufacturing processes, is performed by a substrate processing apparatus including a carrier block for holding a carrier accommodating a plurality of semiconductor wafers (hereinafter referred to as “wafers”) and a processing block for processing a wafer sent from the carrier block.
The processing block is sometimes formed by vertically stacking unit blocks of a unit block for a coating process, which performs a coating process of various chemical liquids such as a resist, and a processing block for a developing process, which performs a developing process. In this case, there is provided a stacked stage group for sending a wafer to the respective unit blocks, on a rear side (processing-block side) of a movement path of a wafer transfer mechanism disposed on the carrier block. For example, JP2009-278027A discloses such a substrate processing apparatus that is constituted as a coating and developing apparatus.
In the above substrate processing apparatus, the unit blocks are stacked on one another as described above, in order to reduce a ratio of a floor area occupied by the substrate processing apparatus relative to a floor area of a clean room in which the substrate processing apparatus is installed. However, further reduction of this ratio is desired. In addition, in this substrate processing apparatus, a higher throughput is required, while prevention of lowering in throughput is required even when the wafer transfer mechanism of the carrier block has a trouble.
JP2009-260087A describes a substrate processing apparatus including a carrier block having two transfer mechanisms, and a processing block having two stacked unit blocks. Each of the transfer mechanisms accesses a stage disposed on an entrance of each unit block, and a wafer is transported between the carrier block and the unit block via the stage. However, the stage to which one transfer mechanism is accessible is limited to a stage of one unit block, and thus the above problem cannot be solved.